


Something From Nothing

by lifeofsnark



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben needs somewhere to live when he gets home from deployment, Cunnilingus, F/M, For making this so violently American, Hurricanes ruin everything, I blew off Ben Solo's hand, I would also like to apologize, Luke is still cranky, Rey Builds Tiny Houses, Sexual Content, Since your spelling tells me you are British, Tiny House AU, p in v, yes - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-24 23:13:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17109962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lifeofsnark/pseuds/lifeofsnark
Summary: Excerpt:It was Rey, the fostered neighbor kid that had run loose all over Luke’s land once upon a time; the one that had pestered him to play or go swimming back when he’d spent his summers out here in the sticks.Once again memory pulled Ben under: chasing her into the pond, splash, cool green all around him, her legs flitting by as she swam away. Rey, her lip cut. Rey, spitting watermelon seeds with his dad- every summer, Rey.She’d grown up well. The years that had kicked Ben from one side of the world to the other had been a hell of a lot kinder to Rey. She was in scuffed boots and jeans that had been washed soft and broken in to cradle her legs (when had they gotten so long?) gently. She was in a worn t-shirt, and the once-shoulder length hair she’d sported as a teen had grown out into a braid that was resting over one shoulder.“Oh, she said, casually as anything, as if she hadn’t just angrily barged into private property. “Hey, Ben.”





	1. Foundation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sciosophia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sciosophia/gifts).



##  **August, 2018**

 

_Follow the bubbles._

 

When he’d done the special forces training they simulated a plane crash, buckling everyone into some kind of freaky rollercoaster car that slammed into a pool at sixty miles an hour. When you were disoriented you were supposed to follow the bubbles up the surface and safety and air.

 

Seeing the farmhouse had been like that, a smack in the face with so many layers of emotion and memory that for a second Ben couldn’t breathe. His family had lived in the house for more than two hundred years. Skywalker Farms always looked the same, somehow. It didn’t matter if the fences faded or if the porch was repainted or if the house had had an addition put on. It was like the ship of Theseus sailing into the future; different but always the same.

 

What had changed, now, was Ben. The last time he’d driven down these winding, fence-lined roads and into this pitted, rutted driveway he’d been a different man. The house hadn’t changed: he had.

 

The left handed gear-shift was wrong in his hand, awkward and cold. That’s how his life felt now, as a one-handed man: wrong, off, all the suppleness gone. He’d gone to war cocksure and grinning: he wasn’t smiling now.

 

Leia had forwarded him his discharge papers. They’d been delivered to her Capitol City townhouse, but he hadn’t been there anymore. There were too many people and not enough sunlight; too many noises that went bump in the night.

 

From there he’d gone to Han’s house on the Corellian Bay, but that had been wrong too. It had been too quiet, he and his father dancing around each other like ghosts, both choking on the things they hadn’t said.

 

_Why didn’t you fight for me?_ Ben wanted to ask. _Back when you split, when mom made me move in with her; when she said the capitol would give me more opportunities, why didn’t you ask me if I wanted to stay?_

 

Ben hadn’t been able to sleep there, either. In the silence of the marsh he’d woken up listening for detonations that never came.

 

Now like Goldilocks in the third bed he was shuffling along to Uncle Luke and the old family farmhouse in Jakku County. He was supposed to ride out the late summer months here, and then return to his mom’s townhouse in October. She’d lined up work for him, a job with a contractor doing security system work.

 

That was another problem, though. He didn’t _do_ security work; he’d been trained to kill people, and he’d turned it into an art. He was offence, not defense, but who else would hire a one-handed man?

 

There was a different car in the driveway when Ben bumped up to the house. Luke’s old Chevy was pulled around to the side, and behind it was a huge black Lincoln SUV, all shiny and new. It fit in with the weathered fences and old house about as well as Ben did.

 

The screen door slammed on the porch and Ben glanced over, watching as a middle-aged couple waved back up at Luke. He knew these people: the Damerons.

 

“Hey, Ben!” Kes called, walking over.

 

Ben hated this part. He kept having to re-meet people, kept having to pretend that he couldn’t see people’s eyes flicking from his stump to his face and back again.

 

His therapist told Ben that he ought to wear the prosthetic, but at the moment Ben thought the fake was worse than nothing at all.

 

Kes rounded the car and stuck out his left hand, shaking Ben’s confidently. Admiral Dameron did something for the joint chiefs of staff- maybe he was used to amputees.

 

“Glad to see they sprung you from the hospital,” said Kes, stepping back.

 

“Me too,” said Ben as Shara hugged him. When she pulled back she looked up at him, reminding Ben of his own mother.

 

“Being out here will do you good,” she said. “It’ll get some color back in your cheeks.”

 

Ben didn’t want color in his cheeks. He wanted his whole goddamn hand, but nothing was going to bring that back, so he nodded and held his tongue.

 

“We’ll clear out so you can spend some time with your uncle,” said Kes, tugging his wife away by the hand. “We’ll see you, son.”

 

They climbed in the Lincoln and backed out as Ben bent into his car to grab the duffle that had gone with him… everywhere. It said S O L O down the side in stenciled black letters that had begun to peel and crack. Solo meant alone, and at this point, after nearly three months of hovering nurses and relatives, Ben wondered if he’d ever be alone again.

 

Luke was leaning against the railing of the old porch when Ben approached with the duffel swung over his shoulder.

 

“Hey, kid,” he said, the way he always had. “Welcome back.”

 

“Thanks,” said Ben. “Good to be here.”

 

He meant it and he didn’t. He was still glad to be alive- he’d prayed to a god he didn’t believe in when he’d seen the blood pouring from his arm- but he wasn’t exactly able to gather up enthusiasm for being _there,_ at the farm. He didn’t feel enthusiasm about much anymore.

 

“I got sheets on your bed, and the horses need feeding,” said Luke, walking into the house. “C’mon in.”

 

Ben wandered into the old house, amused. This was the oldest section- the foyer, the sweep of stairs, the guest parlor-turned-library, and the dining room. Each generation had done something to the house (wallpaper, an addition, a new roof) and yet the house always remained a home; always stayed cozy and timeless despite the clashing styles and decades and (sometimes) centuries.

 

Luke’s bedroom was in the back off the kitchen addition, the most recent add-on to the house. Ben was in one of the old rooms up the stairs. They creaked as he jogged up them, and he turned right into the room that had always been set aside as his. The same quilt was there on the bed, the same pair of rainboots that he’d forgotten here were tossed in the corner. The same old pictures hung on the faded walls.

 

This was wrong, too. He’d changed while he was away, and the room hadn’t. It’s like he was a hermit crab that had returned to a too-small shell.

 

“Time’s wasting, kid!” Luke yelled, and the the back door banged shut, too.

 

Ben dug his boots out of the bag and glared at the laces. This was the worst, too. Another present from Leia, the boots (civilian boots, chocolate brown and heavy with stiff, fine leather; nothing like the half-destroyed tan things from the the Senate) had hooks and laces that went up several inches of his calf. They were a pain in the ass for a one-handed man, even with all the tips that masochist of an occupational therapist had given him. He toed off the sneakers that had been triple-knotted and eventually, cursing, he got the fucking boots on.

 

Ben clattered down the stairs and out the back door, which slammed shut behind him, the wood swollen with late-August humidity. The barn was about fifty yards away from the back porch, just off to the side of the house. It wasn’t two hundred years old, but it had weathered, too: the wood was a soft grey-green, the tin roof sported rust stains in creeping fingers of decay, and at the very peak the weather vane had rusted too tightly to spin; the leaping horse always pointing north.

 

Luke was in the barn dumping feed into brightly colored, numbered buckets. “You know the drill,” he said when Ben walked into the dusty gloom.

 

Ben did. The numbers on the buckets corresponded to the numbers on the stalls. He dumped sweet grain and balancer into the corner feeders of the empty stalls, letting himself get lost in the rhythm of dump, walk, dump, walk. Flies droned, and Ben thought for a moment the he could almost hear the air sizzle.

 

Two by two Luke brought in the eight horses under his care, and slowly Ben dragged the faded green hose down the barn aisle, filling water buckets as he went.

 

This was the strangest welcome of them all so far, but Ben couldn’t find it in himself to mind. Leia had treated him like he was fragile: the first time in his thirty-two years of life she spoke softly with him; she didn’t bark an order or scold him or chase him around the house with huge, raspy laughs. She hadn’t even yelled when he’d skipped therapy.

 

Han had had sad, tired eyes. He didn’t say anything, but he acted strangely too, leaving coffee and already-cut sausage links with fried eggs on the counter for Ben to find when he wandered down in the morning.

 

Luke- Luke acted like this was just another summer vacation with his nephew. _Dump your stuff, do your chores, and there’s a cold beer in it for you after dinner._ It might be a boring pain in the ass, but at least it was normal.

 

Ben stood in the gloom of the barn listening to the sound of horses munching their dinner. Ten thousand years ago someone had looked at a horse and thought _I’m going to ride that thing,_ and ever since then men had stood by listening to the soft sound of horses munching. Once it had meant power and security and transportation. Now, for Ben, it meant continuity. He’d played in this barn, ridden his first pony here, fallen off the hayloft ladder to break his arm.  The barn smelled like heat and hay and alkaline dust, and just for a second, Ben relaxed.

 

“Luke!” someone yelled from outside. “You didn’t pull the grill out. Did you forget-”

 

The yelling person rounded the corner and stood outlined against the honey-deep light of evening.

 

It was Rey, the fostered neighbor kid that had run loose all over Luke’s land once upon a time; the one that had pestered him to play or go swimming back when he’d spent his summers out here in the sticks.

 

Once again memory pulled Ben under: chasing her into the pond, _splash,_ cool green all around him, her legs flitting by as she swam away. Rey, her lip cut. Rey, spitting watermelon seeds with his dad- every summer, Rey.

 

She’d grown up well. The years that had kicked Ben from one side of the world to the other had been a hell of a lot kinder to Rey. She was in scuffed boots and jeans that had been washed soft and broken in to cradle her legs (when had they gotten so long?) gently. She was in a worn t-shirt, and the once-shoulder length hair she’d sported as a teen had grown out into a braid that was resting over one shoulder.

 

“Oh, she said, casually as anything, as if she hadn’t just angrily barged into private property. “Hey, Ben.”

 

She just glanced at him and wrote him off, turning to Luke instead. “I’ve got the steaks resting on the counter, and I’ll drag out the grill. Did you get the asparagus?”

 

“Yep,” said Luke, peeking over the stall door to check on his oldest charge. “In the veggie drawer.”

 

Rey walked off, all confident, toned, and tanned, and Ben watched her go with his brain spinning.

 

“What, the girl lives here now?” he asked in disbelief. He’d never disliked Rey, but somehow he couldn’t see Luke just… taking in some stray permanently. Luke had always insisted that he was better off alone, that he didn’t want to deal with anyone, that he could barely stand the owners of the horses he trained.

 

“Don’t be an idiot,” said Luke. “She lives back in the old cow field.”

 

_What, like a nyphy? Or in a tent?_

 

Together the led the horses back out, and Ben was relieved to discover that he could slide a halter off with one hand. That was more reassuring than he’d expected. He’d never been crazy about horses; he’d never gotten up at the crack of dawn wanting to go for a ride. He liked them fine, though, and he’d always thought that they smelled good.

 

When the chores were done and the shadows were long Luke and Ben walked back to the house, comfortable in their mutual silence. _Ten generations of Skywalkers have crossed this yard,_ Ben thought. It put his problems in perspective, at least a little. He may be the one to carry the whole of the Skywalker legacy, but at least he wasn’t the biggest fuck-up. That award uncontestedly went to Ben’s grandfather.

 

Heat was rolling off the grill in waves, making the air shimmer in sibilant rainbows,  and behind it Rey was sprawled in an ancient sagging lawn chair, one leg over the arm and a beer dangling loosely from her fingers. “How do you want your steak?” she called as Ben and Luke climbed up the porch steps.

 

“Medium,” said Ben, annoyance creeping back up his spine. It wasn’t right that she was so comfortable here, here in the place that was his. It wasn’t fair that she could be so content when his world had imploded.

 

Ben grabbed a beer from the fridge, shook his head at Luke ( _Tatooine Moons, still? Really?) a_ nd returned to the porch in time to watch Rey slap three big steaks onto the smoking grill.

 

“The potatoes are about done,” she announced to the world at large.

 

Ben and Luke settled into the ancient wicker chairs, and together the three of them watched the sun sink down behind the faded barn. In the trees peeper frogs began to sing, and the grass rustled in the evening breeze.

 

“What’s the occasion?” asked Ben when Rey flipped the steaks and the foil packet of asparagus.

 

“The Damerons and I made a deal on a house,” said Rey, her voice dripping with satisfaction like the steaks dripped grease. “If this goes through with all the bells and whistles I think they’re going to want-” She turned to him and pointed with the grilling tongs, emphasizing her point, “-and they’re going to want bells and whistles- this will put me in the black.”

 

“You sell real estate?” asked Ben, taking a sip of the beer. He’d never liked this brand, but at the same time… it tasted of all the summers that had come before.

 

“No, said Rey, tapping the toes of her boots in the dust, her excitement seemingly too great to be contained. “I build tiny houses.”

 

##  **Summer, 2002**

 

The year Rey turned ten two brothers moved into the little house across the road from Luke. Mom wasn’t in the picture, dad was in the military, and he’d decided that the eldest, at thirteen, was old enough to supervise things at home.

 

He wasn’t.

 

They loved nothing better than picking on Rey, tossing rocks and insults at her with equal enjoyment. It had never occurred to her to tell Plutt anything about it. If he was home he was drunk, and if he wasn’t home he was working. Most summer days Rey would ride over to Luke’s on her fourth-hand bike, one that looked like it was mostly rust and hope, and spend the afternoon watching his horses or reading in the barn or playing in the pond.

 

It was best when Ben visited. He didn’t know she was the weird foster kid that nobody wanted, and if he did know he didn’t seem to care. He’d ride with her sometimes, or make sure she didn’t drown in the pond (which was _stupid,_ Rey was a great swimmer), or let her sit with his family and drink tea. His mom made great tea.

 

She was headed over later than usual one afternoon; Finn’s mom had taken them both to the library and then to McDonalds. Full of adventure and Happy Meal Rey had taken off for Luke’s, her legs pumping at the creaking pedals of the bike.

 

The neighbor boys had been hiding behind the azalea at the end of Luke’s long driveway. The older one had grabbed the handlebars, the younger one had grabbed Rey, and then she was huddled on the ground, her arms over her head, feeling the toes of their sneakers thudding into her ribs and butt and skull.

 

She wasn’t sure how long she was down there, tasting blood and snot and dirt. Rey felt the car coming before she heard it; the ground beneath her rumbled and hummed, and then a car door slammed and someone was yelling something and the boys were scrambling and Rey’s heartbeat was still pounding furiously in her ears.

 

“Can you feel everything?” someone was asking her.

 

Rey squinted her eyes open. Ben Solo’s face swam into vision, his dark hair falling in his eyes, which were wide with worry.  “Hmm?”

 

She pushed herself up, feeling her joints pop and her muscles shriek.

 

“I asked if you could feel everything, but I guess so,” said Ben.

 

Rey was still kneeling and panting when Ben walked around behind her, slid his hands under her arms, and half-carried her to the truck. She leaned on the frame while he opened the passenger door, and then in one smooth motion he’d boosted her up into the seat, collected her bike, and gotten back in behind the wheel.

 

She turned her face to the side vent and let the cool air blow across her skin. She didn’t want to look at Ben, either. She didn’t want to see him now that he’d realize that she was an unwanted loser, a kid abandoned by her mom and dad, disliked by all the neighbors.

 

He’d treat her differently when he found out, just like everyone else did.

 

“Do you want to go home?” he asked her. “Or to a doctor?”

 

He sounded like a kid again, not sure what to do.

 

“No,” Rey had said. “Finn’s.”

 

She’d given him directions, looking out the window or into the air vent, trying to keep her back straight and prevent herself from crying. She wished- well. There wasn’t any point in wishing.

 

He took her to Finn’s house, and Miss MaryAnne had cleaned Rey up and made a special soup, just for her, and then Rey had spent the next few weeks waiting: waiting for the gossip, waiting for Child Protective Services (not that she wanted them, she didn’t want to be moved again), waiting for the fallout of Ben telling.

 

He didn’t. Ben had kept her secret, and when he’d come the next summer, he’d still grinned at her just the same.

 

 

##  **Labor Day, 2018**

 

Ben didn’t know exactly why he’d agreed to go to the barbecue with Rey. Maybe a little because Luke had wanted them to go “and see people their own age,” and maybe partly for a change of scenery. He’d been on the Skywalker Farm a week, and nothing much had happened.

 

Mostly Ben suspected he’d gone because of Rey: because she’d thought to invite him, because she’d left her hair down and waving in the faint breeze, and maybe because out of nowhere she had mile-long legs showcased in cuffed little blue shorts.

 

Once they’d arrived at the Damerons’ house Ben realized he’d been conned. This wasn’t a party. It was some kind of... _carnival_. More than twenty cars were parked along the winding, tree-lined driveway, and tents had been set up in a field on one side of the house.

 

“Oh, a lot of people stay over,” said Rey casually as she’d carried her slow cooker up the drive. “People drink too much, or want to stay for the fireworks, so they just stay overnight.

 

Ben didn’t say anything to that. He was caught up on the word _fireworks._

 

Somehow he made it through the evening, playing cornhole with Poe and Finn and Rey, eating a burger (at least he could hold that one-handed) and generally avoiding as many stares and questions as he could. He made it until everyone started spreading blankets on the lawn for fireworks, and then, like a real goddamn _man,_ he went to sit in the truck.

 

The therapist would tell him that it was alright to leave a stressful situation, and that was true, he knew it was. He just didn’t _like_ that this was his reality now. He didn’t like jumping at the trucks that downshifted through the capitol outside his mother’s home, he didn’t like how he twitched when it was too quiet, expecting bombs that would never drop.

 

He hated that he couldn’t enjoy fireworks.

 

As the first _crack_ ripped through the night sky, the driver’s side door opened and Rey slid into the seat. She had a six pack of hard cider in her hand, and she rested it on the seat between them.

 

“Ready to go?” she said. “We could just have a drink back at Luke’s.”

 

It was tempting, but no. “No,” he said. “I’m fine.” Fireworks popped through the air, and Ben could feel his fists clenching.

 

_Follow the bubbles. I’m home._

 

“What do you _want_ to do?” she asked.

 

“Get drunk,” he said in a moment of complete honestly. He’d been back on home soil for more than three months, and he’d allowed himself just a couple beers. He’d been terrified that if he’d allowed himself any more he’d find himself in a hole he’d never climb out of.

 

“Alright,” said Rey. She popped the lid off one of the ciders and took a swig. “Can we at least sit back in the bed? It’s way too stuffy in here.”

 

“Yeah,” said Ben, who’d been thinking the same thing. “Okay.”

 

They climbed over the wheel wells into the back of the truck. It was actually better this way: instead of being surprised by the loud _boom_ of gunpowder and light, he could watch the rocket fly and brace himself for the following explosion.

 

Without taking his eyes off the star-studded sky, Ben jammed a cold bottle between his knees, held it there, and twisted off the lid. He got half of it down in the first gulp.

 

“I should have thought of this,” said Rey from her spot beside him. Here in the dark she was just another shadow.

 

“I should have thought about the fireworks,” she said. “I feel like an asshole, and I’m sorry. We could still go.”

 

Rey’s capacity for kindness had always fascinated Ben. It was resilient without being brittle, despite everything life had taken from her.

 

“I’m not leaving,” said Ben, draining the bottle and going for another. “And it’s fine. You shouldn’t have to worry about me.”

 

He heard cider slosh as she took another sip. “Yeah, well.”

 

They sat for another few moments as splashes of yellow and blue and green ripped through the sky.

 

“Is this some kind of… macho thing?” asked Rey. “Something you have to prove?”

 

Ben grunted and set down his second empty bottle. He probably wouldn’t get _drunk_ drunk on cider, but after so long without he had the tolerance of a teenager again.

 

“I can’t live my life like this,” Ben said, reaching for a third bottle. “I can’t live wondering if something loud is going to go off. I can’t keep trying to feel fingers that aren’t there.”

 

Rey took another sip of her drink.

 

“Fuck,” said Ben, beginning to feel the tell-tale tingles of drunkenness in his fingers. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

 

Fireworks began launching more rapidly now, a kaleidoscope of color across the midnight sky.

 

“Do you remember,” Rey asked so quietly that he had to strain to hear. “Do you remember when you found me? The year I was ten?”

 

He’d never forget it. She hadn’t cried- when he thought about that day he remembered three things: the thud that boy’s shoe had made against her, how light she’d been when he hauled her up (lighter than his Aunt Quiira’s kids), and how _she hadn’t cried._

 

“I remember,” he said. _Why the fuck was she bringing this up now?_

 

“You saved me,” said Rey quietly. “And you never told anyone about it.”

 

“How do you know?” Ben asked.

 

He glanced over at Rey, who had her head tipped back, watching the final volley of lights. Her profile was delicate, he realized. She was always in motion, even when she was lounged in a chair. It’s like she had an internal spring wound tight, pushing her forward, keeping her moving no matter the opposition.

 

In the dark, he couldn’t see her freckles.

 

“It’s a small town,” said Rey, her voice a little sad. “Eventually, we all know everything.”

 

“What was the point of bringing it up now?” Ben asked, the cider insulating him a little from the embarrassment this conversation would bring.

 

“Because you kept my secret, Ben Solo. I’ll keep yours.”

 

Ben believed her. Overhead the night went dark, and for a few seconds, everything was quiet.

 

Then Poe Dameron started yelling. “Rey!” he yelled. “Did you leave-oh!”

 

Poe and Finn wandered over to the truck and sat down on the tailgate as comfortably as anything. Finn was leaning against Poe’s chest, and Ben blinked- oh right. They were engaged.

 

“We thought you’d left. Sneak off to snuggle?” teased Finn.

 

“No,” said Rey easily. “Not everybody is as cozy as you, you goof.”

 

Finn grinned unabashedly.

 

“It’s quieter back here,” Rey said, passing the last two ciders to the men.

 

“Yeah,” said Poe, leaning back. “I love this party, but man. By the end my ears are ringing, every single year.”

 

“So what’s next for you?” asked Poe, turning to glance at Ben. “Anything lined up?”

 

Ben leaned his head against the back window of the truck, tired down to his _toes_ of this question. “My mom has something lined up for me with a contractor,” he said.

 

Security work, she’d told him. He could use his military expertise. Thing was- well, his military expertise had been in shooting people. He’d probably make the place less secure just by being there.

 

Rey, Poe, and Finn were blinking at him, and Ben realized he’d said all that out loud.

 

“We need substitute teachers,” said Finn tentatively, at the same time as Poe said, “Do you regret it?”

 

“No,” said Ben, looking up at the stars. These were right stars, at least. The right hemisphere, the right season, the right myths behind them. “There’s no point in regretting anything,” he said dully.

 

That little sentence hung in the air like a noose.

 

“I’ve got to get to bed,” said Rey, sticking her bottle of cider over the side of the truck and dumping out the part she hadn’t finished. “Will you tell your parents thanks for me?” she asked Poe.

 

“‘Course,” he said. They scooted out of the truck, Ben a little unsteadily, and this time Poe hugged him.

 

“I really am glad you’re back,” he said, clapping Ben on the shoulder.

 

“Me too,” Ben muttered before sliding into his seat.

 

The drive home was quiet and eerie, only the crunching of the tires over gravel and the rattle of the air conditioning could be heard. Ben brooded about the past- about little broken Rey, about his impulse decision to join up, about the moment he’d realized that his right arm no longer had a hand.

 

Rey pulled into Luke’s driveway, where the porch light had been left on. Wasn’t it supposed to be a candle in the window for the soldiers who came back from war?

 

He lingered for a second in the dark, rumbling truck. “I don’t regret the Navy,” he said slowly, looking at Rey. “But I regret not kissing you.”

 

“When?” asked Rey like she accepted declarations of kissing intent everyday.

 

“When I sold you this fucking truck,” said Ben, and then he was out and walking across the dark yard, the night breeze cool on his flushed face.

 

 

##  **August, 2012**

 

Rey left Plutt’s house on her eighteenth birthday. He wasn’t required to keep her one minute longer than he had to, and she wouldn’t have stayed regardless. Luke had invited her to spend the summer with him, and even thought that stung (it was her birthday, she wouldn’t think of that) she’d been thrilled.

 

Her eighteenth had coincided with Ben’s leave from the Navy: he’d gotten his first deployment orders, and so he’d been given three weeks of consecutive leave. Han and Leia had come to the Skywalker house too, so for three perfect, golden weeks Rey had tasted what family could be.

 

It had been… an odd summer. She was free and she was there and Ben was heading off to war, cocksure and proud. They’d spent three weeks together, swimming and laughing and staying up too late. It hadn’t been romantic- well, not intentionally.

 

On Ben’s last day he’d sold her the truck. She hadn’t been sure even then if it was half out of pity. They’d been out on the back porch listening to the peepers and watching the stars, feet propped up on the railing, a bottle of okay-ish whiskey on the rickety table between them. He’d tossed the keys into her lap and said, “It’s not like I’ll be driving it for a while, and I’ve got the mustang now. What’ll you give me for it?”

 

“Well, I’m not fucking you,” she’d laughed, thinking he meant this as some kind of raunchy joke.

 

“Oh, really?” he’d asked, leaning over the gap between their chairs and letting his eyes go soft and flick to her lips. He’d leaned away again, laughing at himself. “But seriously,” he said. “I don’t need to try and store two cars long term, and it’s not like I’ll need two when I get back. What can you do?”

 

She’d named a sum that amounted to half her savings account, and one that she knew was way too low for the value of his truck.

 

“Done,” he said, gulping down another mouthful of whiskey.

 

“I can’t thank you enough,” said Rey, her voice quiet and serious.

 

Ben shrugged. His father was like that too. He shrugged away anything nice he did, uncomfortable with thanks.

 

As far as Rey could see it, the truck was the thread that could pull her into the future. She had transportation. She could bring herself to the world, even if the world didn’t want to bring itself to her.

 

“Now,” said Ben, crossing his legs at the ankles, “You need to change the oil every four thousand miles, which out here is like every two trips into the grocery store. Put antifreeze solution in the wiper fluid every winter, and-”

 

Rey leaned over and smacked him on the arm. “I know all that you idiot,” she said, grin back in place.

 

Ben leaned towards her too, grinning, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “I know,” he said. “But it’s so easy to get a reaction out of you, kid.”

 

Rey had huffed, mock-offended, and Ben had laughed again, his eyes focused on her smiling mouth.

 

She should have kissed him. She should have tasted his laughter before he went off to war.


	2. Framing

##  **September, 2018**

 

Dr. Yodah’s office always reminded Ben of some kind of… jungle cave. It had been done all in shades of green, complete with jade curtains that let in filtered verdant light, like looking up at the world from the bottom of Luke’s pond.

 

“How have you been?” asked Dr. Yodah in his lilting accent.

 

“Fine,” said Ben automatically, like he always did.

 

Yodah blinked at him, waiting for the real answer.

 

“I’m embarrassed,” said Ben, and then he told the little man about the events of the last night.

 

“Progress,” said Yodah.

 

“What?” asked Ben, broken momentarily out of his own pity-party.

 

“Progress, that’s what this is,” said Yodah with no small amount of satisfaction.

 

“It doesn’t feel like it,” said Ben. It never did.

 

“You admitted something not only to yourself, but to others. Acceptance. Sharing. These are all important stages.”

 

Ben sat in silence on the little loveseat for a moment, looking up at the eggshell colored office ceiling. “I hate my car,” he said out of the blue. Yodah never seemed to mind Ben’s conversational jumps, and it was one of the reasons Ben still drove in to see him. “And I’ve got this idiot, impulsive idea-”

 

“Not an idiot,” Yodah murmured, but Ben pressed on.  


“-I want a truck. I hate the mustang, I hate that I bought the damn thing when I thought I was invincible and untouchable and that nothing would ever change, not for me. I hate the steering wheel, and I need something that will tow.”

 

“Tow what?” Yodah asked.

 

“A house,” said Ben, hearing his own mouth form the words for the first time. He wanted a house, one of Rey’s tiny houses. He’d looked them up after she told him what it was she did, and it made sense. He could pay for the house with his savings, and then his housing- and his privacy- would be guaranteed indefinitely.  

 

He confessed the rest, running over his usual fifty minute slot. Yodah nodded and chimed in here and there, and on the way home Ben found himself pulling into a Ford dealership. They could order an F250 with the special accessibility steering column, but it would take about three weeks.

 

Ben moved on to the Toyota dealership next door. They had a used Tundra in stock, they said. One they hadn’t been able to shift with the reconfigured wheel.

 

An hour later Ben was in a truck complete with tow kit, and he had one more decision left to make.

 

It had been an impulse _fuck-you_ that had had him signing on to train for war. Maybe another spontaneous life decision could cancel it out.

 

 

##  **Fall, 2016**

 

“Luke!” Rey yelled, banging in through the front door and shaking rain off her coat. “Hey, Luke, I’m back from my exam!”

 

“We’re in here!” he called from the kitchen, and Rey followed the sound, the gloomy day doing nothing to dim the excitement bubbling inside her.

 

“Who’s we?” she yelled, but she’d gone back into the kitchen before he could answer.

 

Han raised a cup of coffee at her, half-toast, half-greeting. “Hey, kid,” he said. “How’d you do?”

 

“I don’t know, yet,” said Rey. “They’ll post my score sometime this week, but I think I did okay.”

 

“Coffee?” asked Luke, nodding towards the pot.

 

“Nah,” said Rey. She was already jittery; with another cup of coffee she’d launch to the moon. “Thanks.”

 

She sank onto a bar stool, and for a few seconds it was peaceful in the little kitchen, just the hum of the heater and the rain pattering down outside. “What if I didn’t pass?” she whispered.

 

She’d staked it all on this: her savings, her future, her faith in herself. It all rode on the results of her contractor's exam.

 

“You did,” said Han.

 

“But forty percent-”

 

Han held up a blunt-fingered hand, tanned and weathered with use. “Never tell me the odds, kid. You did fine.”

 

He walked into the great room and grabbed something off the coffee table. It was thin and rectangular and covered in silver wrapping paper.

 

Han slid it across the counter to her. “Leia wrapped it,” he said, and Rey smiled to herself, not sure if he was telling her as an explanation or out of defense.

 

Rey unwrapped the present carefully, with the delicacy of a child who hadn’t had many presents and wanted the experience to last. “Oh-” she said as the pretty paper came free.

 

“Luke told me what you wanted to call the company,” said Han. He always did this: he’d take any blame you threw at him, but as soon as you tried to thank him he brushed it all away.

 

It was a sign made of gorgeous red cedar, sanded smooth and sealed to a shiny, satiny finish. Across the wood, in perfectly carved, swirling letters, the sign said:

 

**Something From Nothing Builds**

**Est. 2016**

 

In the bottom corner was the seal of Han’s shop: A circle containing a sailboat with the world _Solo_ across the hull.

 

Rey traced the arching letters with the tip of one finger, not sure it was real, not trusting herself to speak. Finally, after a deep, slow breath through her nose, she managed to say, “Thank you, Han. Thank you so much.”

 

“Yeah, well,” said the big man, smiling his lopsided little grin. “You’re welcome. You earned it.”

 

Luke turned from the refrigerator with a little chocolate cake in his hands. Six candles were randomly stabbed into the frosting on top, all at different angles, making the overall effect something akin to a hedgehog.

 

“It isn’t my birthday,” said Rey, but inside she was whimpering, _I could still fail!_

 

“I know,” said Luke, not meeting her eyes. “But it’s not like we celebrated back when it was.”

 

“Eh, birthdays are for kids,” said Rey, trying to lighten the moment, but instead she sounded wistful and sad.

 

“Just blow out the candles and make your damn wish,” said Han.

 

“Can you wish on a not-a-birthday cake?” asked Rey, watching as little puddles of colored wax dribbled into the icing.

 

“Yes!” said Luke and Han together, twins in exasperation, and on a laugh Rey blew out her candles.

 

“One more present,” said Luke, and he passed her a heavy folder, this time meeting her eyes.

 

“What is it?” Rey asked, and she could _feel_ Han rolling his eyes and thinking, Just open it!

 

It was a deed.

 

“Luke!” said Rey, alarmed at the idea that he’d give her-

 

“It’s for the workshop,” he said. “Four acres, back with the old broodmare barn. You need somewhere to build, and I know rent was going to make your business loan so much bigger. Besides- it’s not like my nephew needs _all_ this space.”

 

Luke smiled sadly. Rey burst into tears.

 

Han sat down next to Rey and put an arm around her. “Leia hates to cry too,” he said, present tense, and for whatever reason that made her cry harder.

 

“It’s too much,” she told Luke when she was able to speak without choking on her own snot. “I can’t take four acres of Skywalker land, it was-”

 

“Was for you,” said Luke, surprisingly firmly. “You get the feeder road, that old barn, and the fields around it.”

 

“Thank you,” said Rey, tracing the sign with her fingertips again. “Thank you both.”

 

 

##  **September, 2018**

 

Memory, again.

 

Ben had been eight, and Han had been the one to bringing him to see Uncle Luke. The three of them had decided to camp out like men, dragging cots and canteens back to the old barn that was just hidden from the main house by trees. It had been the first time Ben slept in something other than a house, and he could remember laying awake listening to every rustle and creak in terror and fascination (he’d been with his dad and his uncle; there was no need to be really scared.)

 

It had been the first place that Ben had ever heard Luke mention his war: the Endorian campaign had been long and, in the end, useless. The Capitol troops had done nothing but die in the heat and jungle.

 

Luke hadn’t said anything bad- just that the stars were about the only thing he’d missed from his time in the army. He’d joked that the cots were just as bad as he’d remembered, and Han had said that once the cots wouldn’t have bothered them at all.

 

It was the first time he’d seen his Uncle Luke as a whole human, kind of like the first time a kid sees their teacher in the grocery store: there’s a realization that these people exist in regular time; that they don’t fall out of existence the minute the bell rings or the summer ends. Luke had a _life,_ one that happened all year round, and once he’d been to war.

 

Now the barn was Rey’s, and she looked busy. A long metal trailer had been backed into her workspace, the metal tongue resting on cinder blocks. Ben walked in and shoved his hand (and stump, fuck it) into the pocket of his jeans.

 

“I didn’t recognize you in that truck,” said Rey as she filed away from little imperfection from the dark metal.

 

“I needed it,” said Ben, looking at all the handtools hung neatly on her wall. His dad would have approved. Han's truck had always been filthy, but his tools were immaculate. “Not much you can tow with a sports car.”

 

Rey looked up at him, her whiskey and pine eyes narrowed. “What’re you saying?” she asked, and nerves fluttered in Ben’s belly. What if she said no?

 

But she wouldn’t say no. The universe wouldn’t do that to him, _not again_.

 

“I want a tiny house,” he said, the words tumbling out of him all in a jumble. He _needed_ this. He needed a place of his own, he needed to not move every two years when the Navy said _jump._ He needed security, and if could buy a house without a mortgage, then why not go for it? Why not try?

 

“Have you ever been in a tiny house?” Rey asked, looking at him skeptically.

 

“No,” said Ben. She wasn’t _listening._ “I know what I’m doing. I read about it, I looked it up, I ran some numbers. I want a tiny house.”

 

Rey cocked her head. “I could probably have it done by… February,” she said. “But we’d need to talk numbers and everything, first.”

 

Ben’s stomach plunged. He’d have to go back to his mother’s house, the one with the rich carpets and people always coming and going and forcing him to be polite.

 

“The job starts in October,” he said, trying not to sound desperate. If he sounded demanding, well… it wouldn’t be out of character.

 

“I’ve got the Dameron project,” said Rey, crouching to keep filing. “And it takes me about three months to get one of these done by myself.”

 

“What if you weren’t by yourself?” asked Ben, rocking back on his heels. He looked into the rafters instead of at Rey, not willing to see her reject him. “Is that a bird’s nest?”

 

“Yes,” said Rey, and he grinned at her, the one he’d always smiled when he caught her being a soppy girl. She never could bring herself to squash spiders or sweep down bird’s nests from light fixtures.

 

She glowered back, and then winked, and then it was all _okay_ again, he didn’t have to stand by her formally and grovel. “I could help,” said Ben. “Time’s just about all I’ve got.”

 

Rey looked thoughtful. “You’d be good for the framing and exterior work,” she admitted. “You can measure accurately and use a table saw, right?”

 

Ben looked down his nose at her, eyebrows raised, a look that had been passed through ten generations of Skywalkers. It said, “Really, peasant? You’re asking _me_ that?”

 

Ben flopped back onto the metal trailer base and looked up into the shadowy vaults of the roof. “My dad makes very, very expensive wooden boats for rich fuckers, Rey. I could identify wood types almost as soon as I could name my colors.”

 

Rey poked him and Ben jumped with a laugh.

 

“That doesn’t answer my question, you ass,” she said. “I asked if you could measure, not if you could see the difference between oak and pine.”

 

“I can measure,” said Ben, and when he said it the phrase came without any reservations: not “I _could_ measure,” or “I’ll be slower now,” or “I’ll have to learn to do it backwards”.

 

He could run a saw. He could measure lengths of wood. And if he could do that, he and Rey could build a house.

 

 _Follow the bubbles._ In the turbulent waters of his mind, Ben broke the surface, gulping air.

 

“Well see,” said Rey, with a grin in her voice. “Be here tomorrow at seven.”

 

 

##  **Summer, 2015**

 

It had taken Rey five months. Five months of late nights and long weekends, but she’d done it: she had a house, a tight little place to call her own. She’d cleared it with Luke even before she’d started the build, and there it was: thirty feet long and eleven feet tall from the trailer bed. The outside was stained a dark grey-green, and the bright red front door made Rey ready to cry.

 

It had taken her years: years of saving, of living in an under-insulated room over someone’s garage, years of collecting supplies and skills, but she’d done it. She’d built her first tiny home, and it was _hers_.

 

Finn pulled her into him and kissed her on top of the head. “Well? Aren’t you going to give us the grand tour?”

 

Rey nodded, hid her face for extra second (Finn always smelled like meadow-fresh laundry detergent and cinnamon-y shaving cream), and stepped back, smile firmly in place. With her heart in her throat she walked to that red front door (bold and lucky and _traditional)_ and stepped inside.

 

She’d been inside before. She’d built the damn thing, and then she’d moved in all her stuff, a few boxes at a time. But this felt official, this felt real: it was her first night inside the little structure.

 

Finn and Poe followed her in, both of them gasping in genuine surprise.

 

“It’s so bright,” said Poe, looking up at the skylights.

 

“I thought you were crazy when you said you weren’t going to paint all this wood,” said Finn. “But it works.”

 

Rey thought it worked, too.

 

Finn and Poe wandered through the little space opening cabinets and cooing over the tiny built-in storage holes and climbing the ladder to her lofted bedroom like little kids.

 

“You have to name it,” said Poe. “It’s like a boat, a land boat, and boats have names.”

 

“Home,” said Rey, sinking onto her sofa cushions, the one she’d borrowed Mrs. Clifton’s machine to sew. “It’s just Home.”

 

 

##  **September, 2018**

 

Ben could measure and cut two-by-fours, and that was a relief. She had schematics all printed out for the framing, and by the end of that first day Rey and Ben had bolted all the external wall uprights in place. She was hungry and sweaty and brilliantly, stupidly happy.

 

Ben hadn’t cut off any of his remaining fingers, which was an idea that had woken her up in a cold sweat. He’d been even-tempered and efficient, letting her give the directions, and he had- true to his word- been comfortable with the saw and lumber. He hadn’t even complained about her choice of music.

 

After a quick salad thrown together in her tiny but perfect kitchen, Rey pulled up the Dameron file and calculated margins and timelines and overhead, and then gave Shara a call.

 

“Rey!” she answered immediately.

 

“I  hope I’m not interrupting dinner,” said Rey when she heard water running in the background.”

 

“Nope,” said Shara. “Just washing up.”

 

“We got the framing done,” said Rey. “Ben and I did.” Then she explained it all: the time crunch, Ben wanting a place of his own, his agreement to work for her to get everything done quickly.

 

“The thing is, even with the two of us working, I don’t think I can have two houses done by his start day in October,” Rey explained. “And you were under contract first. I was thinking maybe- well, if you and Kes and Poe, on his days off, wanted to come help with the basic carpentry and finishing, I’d give you my labor for free and take ten percent off the materials. It brings the price down twenty thousand.”

 

“Let’s do it,” said Shara immediately. “What time do you want us over tomorrow?”

 

“Um,” said Rey, caught off guard by her immediate acceptance. “Don’t you need to talk it over with Kes?”

 

“Nope,” said Shara, completely unrepentant. Rey loved her. “He’ll understand, and besides: he loves playing with tools. Just keep him away from the plumbing. Every pipe he’s ever touched has leaked, exploded, frozen, or come mysteriously unscrewed.”

 

 _Yikes._ “Duly noted,” said Rey. “I usually start at seven this time of year, but come over whenever you can.”

 

“See you then,” said Shara, and disconnected.

 

Rey tidied away her little folding desk, checked the water level in her grey tank, and let Busy Body out one last time. Crickets were chirping, and somewhere in the trees an owl hooted softly. So she may be a soft touch, and maybe the Dameron project wouldn’t be the one to tip her over into financial security.

 

Ben just seemed so damn lost, and she’d have his project to do right after the Dameron’s. _Everyone deserves a home,_ Rey told BB as she climbed the ladder up to her bed. _Weird orange rescue dogs, freckled foster girls, and lanky one-handed veterans. And barn swallows, too._

 

 

##  **March, 2002**

 

“It isn’t your fault!” Leia yelled as Ben pushed past her, yanking at his tie.

 

“That isn’t going to matter!” Ben yelled. “The papers, the cable stations, they’re already dragging us both through the mud.

 

“You were an aide! You _can’t_ have done this,” said Leia, following Ben back into the kitchen.

 

“You know that doesn’t matter,” Ben snarled at his perfect, political mother. She was in a silver grey skirt suit today, with pearls at her ears and in her hair. “First the media  gossiped when I went to aide for Senator Snoke because they assumed it was party espionage. Then they realized I really did want to work for a conservative, and _now,_ now they think I’ve been a part of voter disenfranchisement, a cover-up of sexual assault, and party to vote purchasing. Your name is on this, mom, _why don’t you care?”_

 

“I do care,” said Leia quietly. “I tried-”

 

“You tried to warn me,” drawled Ben. “Leia Skywalker Solo, darling of the Old South and champion of the poor. I know, mom, you’ve always tried to _tell_ me things.”

 

His keys were in his pocket, jangling _drive_ and _freedom_ and _forget._ “I’ll see you later, mom,” he said, putting all the fury and anger into his voice that he could. He couldn’t wait around for her to tell him that she’d been right.

 

He got in his truck and took off, driving through the maze of one way streets until he’d hit open highway. He couldn’t live up to his parents’ names, either of them. He couldn’t sit the Skywalker seat; he had no patience for politics. He couldn’t go back to his dad now, and he’d had no talent for sailing.

 

He didn’t have the patience for more college, didn’t have a name anonymous enough for anything, but-

 

Well. He could always join up, be a face in a crowd. 

His mom would hate that. She could have gotten him into the Naval Academy or West Point. He could go to OCS… or he could enlist. The army would take him away, or the navy, and he’d never have to be the Skywalker heir again.

 

He went home with a copy of the contract: he owed the Senate the next six years of his life. When he got his boot camp assignment, his new life would begin. It was the first thing he’d chosen for himself, the first thing that hadn’t been, “Oh, let me call old Akbar,” or “I think I know someone…”.

 

Ben had picked. Ben had signed. And Ben would leave.

 

 

##  **September, 2018**

 

Apparently, overnight, Rey had changed her plans. Did she warn him? Did she call Luke and pass on a heads up to Ben?

 

Of course not. She’d ambushed him with the Dameron clan, and they were exuberant.

 

The big black Lincoln rolled into Rey’s workshop just ahead of Ben, and from the car they emerged, carrying slow cookers and grocery bags and heavy plastic coolers. They were in jeans- designer jeans, but jeans nonetheless- and boots and bandanas. They looked like a photoshoot for Levi.

 

“What’s going on?” Ben asked Rey. She was plugging in extension cords, testing all the connections to the power tools.

 

“I asked the Damerons to help,” said Rey. “With them we can get this done in fifteen days, which would give us five weeks to complete yours. I think we can make it work. They honestly seemed excited to help,” she said, grinning over at Shara and Poe. Poe was loudly complaining that he wasn’t a pack mule, and Shara was telling him that if she said he was, then he was a pack mule and he’d like it.

 

Ben had just about adjusted to the idea of being around the noisy family for two weeks, and then they started asking him questions.

 

“So we hear you want one of Rey’s houses!” said Shara, studying the rendered plans Rey had printed.

 

“Yes,” said Ben. _When had it become her place to spread his business around town?_

 

“I think you’ll love it. Although,” said Shara cocking her head to study Ben. “Maybe you don’t want a lofted bedroom. You’re a bit tall.”

 

Thankfully Rey interrupted Shara at that point. Like a high school shop teacher she told them her safety rules, through which Kes fidgeted, Poe rubbed BB’s belly, and Shara listened attentively. Ben brooded.

 

He was back on saw duty. Poe and Kess were going to start on the roof - flat for this model; they could use it as a kind of porch- and Shara and Rey were hanging windows.

 

“I thought you didn’t want the job in the capitol,” commented Poe while he waited for Ben to cut him another piece of plywood.

 

“Doesn’t matter if I want it or not,” Ben muttered. For a moment he thought he could feel his lost fingers again, clenching into a fist, but the sensation passed. “It’s not like I have a lot of options.”

 

“There are always options,” said Poe.

 

No matter how much measured breathing Ben did it didn’t seem to make a difference in his mood. The morning passed slowly, and out with the saw and the sun Ben could feel himself burning. He was annoyed at the music ( _it hadn’t bothered him the day before_ , a voice inside pointed out), he was annoyed at the way Rey laughed so easily with these people, her joy sharp across his nerves. He was annoyed at Poe’s ease, at how he smacked a kiss onto his mother’s cheek or blew sawdust off Rey’s hair or told jokes that had Kes roaring with laughter.

 

Adding insult to injury, Ben realized at lunch that he couldn’t hold a bowl of chili and eat it too. He couldn’t stand with the others and chat while spooning in spicy food, no. He had to go rest the bowl on the frame of his truck and then attempt to eat with his goddamned useless left hand. He was back out in the sun, alone, listening to the laughter of Rey.

 

He wasn’t _jealous_. He didn’t turn and watch Poe ruffle her hair out of jealousy. Poe was an engaged man; a bisexual engaged man.

 

What if Rey and Poe had hooked up? Before Poe got with Finn?

 

That was the way these ass-backwards towns worked, right? Everyone had to date everyone else. There weren’t enough people to hold up the gentleman’s code.

 

Who had Rey been with? _Any why was he wondering?_ It was none of his fucking business. She was going to build him a house, preferably without telling everyone in the state that she was doing it, and then he’d leave.

 

The afternoon didn’t go any better, but Ben managed to keep it together _right_ up until the end.

 

He’d been grinning like the Jolly Roger flag and nodding as the Damerons packed their stuff and brushed off the sawdust and told Rey that they’d already made so much progress, that they could picture where everything was going to go, that tiny houses were such a good idea, weren’t they?

 

That didn’t bother Ben. What tipped him over the edge was Kes casually telling him, “Leia heard you’re getting a house; she wants you to call her tonight.”

 

“Thanks,” said Ben through gritted teeth. He fiddled with winding extensions cords back up for the night until the Lincoln had disappeared into a cloud of dust, and the he turned on Rey.

 

She was carrying her tools back into the shelf-lined storage room, and when she came back through the door she was met by six feet of snarling Skywalker heir.

 

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked, so _furious_ that his life decisions were public again still public, always public. “Are you going to take out a billboard: Rather than live with his fucking mother, broken Ben Solo is getting a _trailer?”_

 

“I was asking the Damerons to do a ton of work on the house they’d already commissioned and I changed their contract for _you,”_ said Rey slowly, like she was talking to a child.

 

Nope. That wasn’t going to work, her _this is your fault, you moron_ tone wasn’t going to fly.

 

“It is none of your _fucking business_ telling people what I’m doing,” he said, every muscle in his body vibrating with contained rage. “You could have just said another project came along, but no, everyone in this fucking backwater thinks that everyone’s lives are theirs to gossip about.”

 

Rey’s eyes narrowed and something in her ...shifted. She’d already been standing straight, but now she looked loose as well, like a coiled rattler ready to strike. Deep in the back of Ben’s brain, in the part that remembered being stalked across savannahs and jungles, a little red flag began to wave.

 

He ignored it.

 

“Don’t you _dare_ come in here, to my place of business, and accuse of me of behaving unprofessionally. Don’t you _dare_ come here and accuse me of spreading meaningless gossip, and don’t you fucking _dare_ say anything to the Damerons about this. I don’t have to do a goddamn thing for you, Ben Solo. If you say something to Kes or Shara I swear to god I’ll refuse to build you a _thing._ I’ll take pictures and sell you to the cable channels; I’ll come up with so many meaningless gossipy stories that any google searches for your name will look like the National Enquirer on hallucinogens.

 

“This is between you and me, you self-pitying son of a bitch. You and me.

 

She took a step towards Ben, crowding him and making her point, and he was absolutely mortified that he took a step back from her. He was taller and bigger and meaner and _right,_ dammit.

 

“What about Poe?” Ben sneered. “You didn’t list him as under your protection. Sad that he’s marrying someone else?”

 

One of Rey’s sleek eyebrows raised and she chuckled a scornful laugh. “You’re a fucking moron,” she said. “Of course I don’t want you messing with Poe, but at least he could see this coming. He’d been warning me about you from the beginning.”

 

“What, the same old gossip?” Ben asked. “That I inherited my grandfather’s anger issues, that I’ve secretly been to jail, all that trash? I thought better of you, Rey.”

 

“No, you fucking buffoon,” said Rey, turning her back and walking away. “Not that at all.”

 

“I don’t want your pity, Rey!” Ben yelled after her. “And not the Dameron’s, not _anyone’s.”_

 

“Moron,” was the only bit of her response that he caught before she was gone into the gathering dusk.

 

Ben walked home in a huff, reaching that stage of anger where he was still mad, still furious, but suddenly able to see the hole that anger had dug for him.

 

Luke was leaning against the kitchen counter when Ben stomped in. “Rey cancelled on me for dinner,” he said. “Want to tell why?”

 

“So _now_ she learns to keep shit to herself,” muttered Ben, blowing by Luke.

 

“I’ll take that as a no!” Luke called after him.

 

 

##  **Early June, 2018; Crait**

 

The mission had gone to shit. It had before; most missions the rescue divers took were shit, but this… it was shittier than most.

 

They’d been sent to drag a foundering boat of refugees back to Crait because Mycree wouldn’t take them, but then Crait wouldn’t take the ‘defectors’ back either. One boy had already drowned, the sun was baking down, and this wasn’t their _job,_ the had no fucking idea how to deal with a hostile foreign bureaucracy in a language that none of them spoke.

 

They’d been on the docks, fighting with some official, and then the actual fight had broken out. Bombs went off in shop fronts, flash grenades- no real grenades- were flying, and the _duhduhduhduh_ of automatic weapons provided the rhythm to the wharf’s melody of screams.

 

They hadn’t had any cover. That’s what Ben could remember thinking, _We have to find cover!_

 

The man next to him and slumped to the cement jetty with a rattling groan and Ben had grabbed him by the harness straps over his chest.

 

“C’mon Simps,” he said, dragging the man along, headed towards the little bit of shelter provided by a large metal shipping crate. Bullets were still pinging, people were shrieking, and dust clouds from grenade detonations filled the street.

 

“Just a little further,” Ben muttered, and then he was falling forward, trying to twist to see what had happened, and Simps was gone- oh. Those were his legs, over there.

 

And where- oh. Where was his own hand?

 

_Follow the bubbles._

 

He woke up in the triage hospital on Duna, and then his memories were all morphine dreams, piecemeal before waking up in the Akbar Veterans hospital. In the corner of his small, white room a television was playing:

 

“The son of Representative Solo returned home earlier this week from the war in Crait. The thirty-two year old lost a hand in the massacre at the Nree Wharf-”

 

A nurse walked into the room and nodded at him. “You’re awake,” she said, checking his IV line. “Can you tell me your name?”

 

“Off,” Ben said, his mouth so, so dry.

 

The nurse’s eyes widened and clumsily Ben raised his hand (his only goddamned hand) to point at the TV.

 

“I’m Ben Solo,” he croaked. “Now turn that off.”


	3. Finishing

##  **September, 2018**

 

BB was stretched out on the couch, gently snoring, and Rey was running her numbers. She’d said goodbye to the Dameron’s house today, and this one, well, this one had been particularly hard to say goodbye to. She’d built nine houses now, but she’d only built her own with a team. She liked her solitude, but still: she’d miss the Damerons.

 

 _Casa pequeña,_ Rey wrote under the photo slideshow she’d uploaded. The most visited page on her website was ‘Past Builds’; the tiny-house-curious liked a peek into what a downsized life could look like.

 

When someone knocked on her door BB _woofed_ and Rey called “Come in!”

 

Ben pushed the door open and stuck his head inside. “You really should ask who it is,” he said. “Do you just let anyone in?”

 

Rey didn’t smile. After their fight she’d been surprised that he’d show back up to the build. He’d been kinder to the Damerons, and when it was _his_ turn to make something for their shared lunches he’d shown up with a bushel of steamed crabs chilling in a cooler. “I went to visit my dad,” he said when they all gaped at the bounty. “Thought you guys might like these.”

 

It wasn’t an obvious apology; not one the Damerons would have recognized, but Rey saw it for what it was, and she’d cut him some slack. She’d seen all those local fluff pieces about the Representative’s son coming home a ‘hero’. She understood, but it still didn’t give him permission to act like an ass.

 

“Not many people come to see me,” said Rey, sitting back and rolling her shoulders. BB was wagging around Ben, and he was absentmindedly scratching her and getting orange dog hairs all over his black cargo pants. “What’s up?”

 

“It’s bigger than I thought,” said Ben, looking around. “It _feels_ bigger.”

 

Rey looked fondly at her honey-colored home. “Big windows and light colors help a lot,” she said. “And skylights.”

 

Ben wandered into her kitchen, a few flyaway pieces of hair brushing against the ceiling. It was lower there; the kitchen space was beneath the bedroom loft. She wondered how she could make the clearance work for him, but at this point she wasn’t even sure he’d be buying a house.

 

Exasperated, Rey finally asked, “Are you here to apologize or what?”

 

Ben shoved his hands in his pockets and looked at the little built-in cabinets that were her pantry.

 

“I’m here to apologize,” he said. “But I’m having fun looking around.”

 

“Well?”

 

Ben looked at her, his head tucked down and eyes dark. “I’m sorry I yelled at you. I’m sorry I accused you of spreading rumors and information. I’m sorry I loomed over you-”

 

“Are you really sorry for that?” asked Rey, genuinely curious. She’d always had the impression that Ben liked looming.

 

“No,” said Ben, folding himself into the little desk chair next to her front door. “But the rest of it- I am. I talked about it with Dr. Yodah… I’m tired of being angry about everything. I was out of line, and I’m sorry.”

 

“Did this… Dr. Yodah make you apologize?” Rey asked. She was so _tired_ of men saying things they didn’t mean.

 

“No,” said Ben, glancing up at her again. “No, I wanted to apologize. I just… needed some practice.”

 

“Well, nobody ever could ever make you do anything,” said Rey, giving him a short smile. Ben was a dick, but he was a dick in _therapy,_ and she could respect the process of a build, even if the build was on yourself.

 

“I still want a house, if you’ll build it,” said Ben. “I can’t promise not to be an ass, but I can try.”

 

“Yeah, well, I can promise to call you on your assholery,” said Rey, turning to grab a red notebook off a shelf above the couch. “Come over here; we can start sketching stuff out. Have you looked at the pictures on my website?”

 

“Yeah,” said Ben. “I know I want a patio roof.”

 

Rey started sketching on one page and writing down his specs on another.

 

“Can we go taller?” he asked as they discussed layout. “I’m… not short.”

 

“Not without going wider,” said Rey, sketching in where she’d legally need to install emergency exits. “And if we go wider there are some places that will make you get a permit anytime you want to move it.”

 

Designing with Ben was easy- his mind was flexible with the information, and he knew enough of what he wanted to keep from waffling. Rey loved designing; she loved imagining the potential in each little corner and joist. They whiled away an hour deciding on the layout, the siding, and the overall aesthetic of the interior.

 

Ben stood after it was fully dark outside and cicadas were singing in the trees. “It’s really not a bad size,” he commented, stretching his arms.

 

_Why was he so big?_

 

“Yeah,” said Rey, tidying away her eraser and pencils. “It’s big enough.”

 

“You could do yoga in here,” said Ben.

 

The idea of Ben doing yoga would probably keep her up at night. “It’s big enough to dance,” commented Rey typing his specs into one of her spreadsheets. She had a new folder now: Solo Build. “You know how I feel about Taylor Swift.”

 

“Yeah?” asked Ben. “Prove it.”

 

“What?” Rey’s head snapped up.

 

Ben tugged on her wrist, pulling her out from behind the tall TV tray she used as a portable desk.  “C’mon, Rey,” he said. “I’m buying a house. I’ve got to confirm that it’s big enough to dance in.”

 

“Why?” asked Rey as Ben arranged her: one hand on his shoulder, the other held in his own palm. They’d been here before, her and him, symmetrical bodies, symmetrical past and present.

 

“Well, you know,” said Ben. “I was a cotillion kid.”

 

 

##  **August, 2012**

 

“You’re doing it wrong.”

 

Rey looked over her shoulder at Ben lounging in the doorway to the farm house’s old dining room. She was setting the table for Sunday dinner, her first with the whole Solo brigade. Luke, Han, and Leia were at church, a chicken was roasting in the oven, and Rey was slowly working her way around the old cherry wood table, setting down cloth napkins, then forks, knife, spoon. She liked the way it made a little triangle, like a mountain peak against the soft linen napkin.

 

“The setting- water glasses go closest to the plate, and you have to put the knife and spoon on the other side of the plate.”

 

“Yeah?” asked Rey, watching as he rearranged one of the settings she’d already laid.

 

“Yeah,” said Ben. “Don’t ask me why; it’s just the way fancy people do things.”

 

“How do you know this stuff?” asked Rey, rearranging the table.

 

“Cotillion,” said Ben, working his way down the other side of the table.

 

Rey laughed. “You took cotillion? Like, that stupid club where you learn how to curtsy and drink with your pinky finger in the air?”

 

“Pinky finger in the air was a subtle sign that the drinker had syphilis,” said Ben, not looking up. Rey gaped at him. “So no, we didn’t do that.”

 

“What did you do? And why did you actually go?” asked Rey, trying to imagine Ben sitting at a tea party with girls in those puffy dresses and Mary Jane shoes.

 

“It was… it was something I had to do. D.C. and stuff, you know?”

 

“No,” said Rey. “I don’t know. I mean, what’s the point? When are you going to have to host a twelve course meal and dance- and dance the foxtrot or whatever afterwards?”

 

Ben was quiet. The tips of his ears were going red.

 

“Oh,” said Rey.

 

It was another reminder that she was reaching up, so far up that even just hanging out with Luke was probably wrong. She didn’t belong at this table any more than Napoleon the pony did, but they’d invited her anyway. Ben had grown up going to political dinners. He’d probably been enrolled in cotillion to help him find his future wife. Were child marriages still allowed? Maybe just engagements…

 

“Rey-”

 

She blinked and looked over the old table at Ben. “What?”

 

He gave her a _look,_ so she shrugged and continued to arrange wine glasses. “I’m just saying. Normal people don’t need to know how to do this-” she gestured at the table, “Or ballroom dance.”

 

“I’m normal,” said Ben. They’d met at the foot of the table; no spots left to set.

 

“Oh really?” asked Rey, raising and eyebrow and smirking. “Normal? So claims the one percenter. _I’ve_ never had to ballroom dance.”

 

“Normal people need to know this- look. You’re setting a table, you need to know this stuff.”

 

Rey wasn’t sure why he was so offended at being called ‘not normal’. It paled in comparison to things _she’d_ been called.

 

“I’m only doing this because I’m hanging out with one percenters,” said Rey, the teasing gone from her voice.

 

Ben sighed and took Rey’s hand in his, towing her out of the room. She tried to yank free, but he tightened his grip. When they made it into the great room he stopped, let her go, and cued something up on his phone. Tinny classical music played from the phone’s little speakers.

 

“You stand like this,” said Ben, tugging Rey to him with one hand on her hip. He held her other palm in the air at shoulder height.

 

“What are you doing?” asked Rey, trying not to shiver at the feeling of his hand on her skin.

 

“I’m teaching you to waltz,” said Ben. “Consider this some sort of free, accelerated cotillion course. Knives and spoons on the right side of the plate, keep your elbows off the table, do a simple waltz step. Easy.”

 

Rey didn’t have the heart to tell him she’d never have a chance to use any of this information again. Right now he was her fairy godmother and handsome prince all rolled into one, and Rey was going to enjoy this to its fullest. “What next?” she asked, bouncing a little on her toes.

 

“You mirror what I do,” said Ben, looking down at her. “I start with my left foot, and you start with your right. I step directly forward, so you step back.”

 

He walked her through the simple little box step: back, left, together. Back, left, together, each time turning a little; their axis the shared space between them.

 

“Don’t look down,” said Ben. “You’re supposed to watch me.”

 

 _She’d spent altogether too much time watching him since she moved out of Plutt’s house earlier in the summer._ “Why?” asked Rey, looking up but not really focusing. She was too busy trying to keep track of her feet. _One two three._

 

“I don’t know,” said Ben, thoughtful. “Probably because if we both hunched to watch our own feet we’d end up knocking our heads together.”

 

“There is that,” said Rey grinning, forgetting to keep track of the steps. She stumbled over Ben’s boat shoes, and he effortlessly pulled her back into place.

 

“Sorry,” she mumbled, looking down again.

 

“You’re fine,” said Ben. “You really ought to feel bad for Evangeline Morrison. She was my waltz partner in seventh grade, and I hadn’t grown into my feet yet.”

 

“ _Evangeline?”_ asked Rey. “I’ve only ever seen that name in regency books.” God, he really was upper class. She stumbled again. He caught her again, yanking her out of that gut-clenching _ohshitohno_ falling feeling.

 

“Wanna know the worst part?” asked Ben, his hand warm on her back. He leaned closer to her, his forehead inches from hers. “Her parents didn’t call her Evie. They called her _Genie.”_

 

“Oh god,” Rey laughed, the fingers on Ben’s shoulder clenching into a fist. “That poor girl.” She had the impulse to rest her head on Ben’s chest, but… she managed to resist. That would have been _way_ too Disney princess.

 

They were quiet for a moment, spinning to the slow three-beat rhythm in the air-conditioned shadows of Luke’s great room. Ben’s hands were warm and he smelled good, and soon there would be roast chicken and family conversation. It might not be _her_ family, but it was family all the same.

 

Outside gravel crunched under tires and Rey started to pull away. “Your parents are back,” she said.

 

Ben nodded and let go of her, stepping away as the front door banged open. The small of her back was still warm where he’d held her, and as she turned away he murmured, “Welcome to cotillion, Rey.”

 

 

##  **September, 2018**

 

It echoed. The big old building in downtown Niima echoed with footsteps, and history, and the steady _knockknockknock_ of Rey’s hammer and chisel.

 

“These are ugly,” said Ben, looking at the pale grey, rectangular tiles. He was holding a miniature crowbar: a one handed man couldn’t hold a chisel and smack it with a ball-peen hammer like Rey was doing.

 

“No,” said Rey, not looking up from her work. “The grout is ugly, and a few of the tiles are stained. We won’t take those, and with dark charcoal grout these will look beautiful and cost you almost nothing.”

 

“Almost?” asked Ben, coaxing another tile from the wall.

 

“Well,” said Rey, glancing up at him from under her lashes. “You do have to pay for labor.”

 

“I’m labor!” said Ben.

 

“Yeah, but I’m not free,” said Rey. She’d filled two crates with the rectangular tiles in the time they’d been there, beating Ben by more than double.

 

“Couldn’t we just buy these?” Ben groused.

 

“No,” said Rey. “It would cost you twice as much, because when I scavenge I cut my hourly labor rate in half, and because old glazed tiles like this would cost you so much more.”

 

“Why do you cut your rate? And if these ugly things are worth so much, why is Niima City not reusing them themselves?”

 

Rey carefully placed another two tiles into her box. “I cut my rate to encourage people to use reclaimed products, and the city is too worried about timelines to take out the things they could reuse.”

 

She gestured grandly with her hammer at the vaulted space around them. “Behold, your tax dollars at work.”

 

Everyone knew the Niima train station was going to be remodeled over the winter. Apparently Rey had heard that and called someone, who called someone, who wrote her a permit to come in and take old tiles. Now Ben was sitting on the hard, dirty floor chipping tiles off a wall on a Saturday afternoon.

 

“I still don’t get the point,” Ben muttered. His neck was starting to ache.

 

“People just… throw stuff away,” said Rey. “It’s easier to just get new as opposed to getting someone to repair a broken thing, or to recycle it into something else. Stuff is thrown away all the time. Tiles, old wood, machines, people. Like they’re nothing…”

 

She trailed off, then went back to chipping up tiles.

 

_Like they’re nothing..._

 

“That’s where you got the name of your company, isn’t it,” said Ben, not even pretending to be focused on the stupid tiles anymore. “Something From Nothing- you use all this recycled stuff; things other people throw away.”

 

“Yeah,” said Rey. “I had a teacher who always said, ‘You can’t make something from nothing.’ I guess that’s technically, true but…” she took a drink from her water bottle, brows furrowed.

 

“But what about books? They come from an idea, a thought, a bunch of words. You can’t measure those, they aren’t real _things,_ they’re nothing. And then trash, or recycled stuff. People thought that was garbage, that’s nothing too. But- but it’s still useful. I can make something with it.”

 

Her hazel eyes were clear and earnest, and Ben felt his heart cracking along the seam. He knew her story: left at a firehouse at aged four, placed with two families before Plutt, a little scrap of human flotsam floating unwanted through the sea of nuclear families.

 

“You’re not nothing, Rey,” he said. “Not to anyone. Not to me.” He could admit now that he’d thought of her so often over the years. He’d wondered what she’d done for Christmas, or if she would miss him if he drowned out on a mission.

 

“I wasn’t talking about me,” she huffed, glancing back at the tiles.

 

“Okay,” said Ben, his throat thick. “But you aren’t nothing.”

 

They took four boxes of tiles and picked up the base for his trailer on the way home. It was quiet, just the sounds of the highway and the tinkle of the radio.

 

_Something from nothing._

 

She’d done it. She’d built herself up into a good person, a success, someone independent and whole despite coming from nothing, from less than nothing. Ben guessed it was his turn, now. He’d had _everything,_ and had tossed it away. Now he was useless, functionally nothing-

 

Well. He could only get better from here. Give him another decade, and he might have his shit together enough to date the woman beside him.

 

 

##  **Spring, 2004**

 

Luke’s kitchen was dark and cool and smelled like burnt coffee. A dish sat on the stove with eggs crusted around the edge, and the air held the sharp, astringent smell of alcohol. Plutt favored whiskey, dark and sticky. Luke like beer, and when the beer didn’t work, he went for rum. Luke was having one of his bad days- probably Rey should come back later. At twelve years old she knew more about how alcohol affected the men in her life than any girl should.

 

She got a glass of water and then turned to head back out to her bike and Plutt’s house. She could ask Luke about it later, on a better day when the house smelled like open windows and PineSol.

 

“Rey? That you?”

 

_If she made it to the door-_

 

“What are you doing here?” he asked, leaning against the wall that led up to the foyer.

 

“I ah- I was just visiting,” fibbed Rey. Mrs. Cooper at the Methodist church said not to lie, but…

 

“No, that isn’t is,” said Luke. “You never could lie for shit.”

 

“I- ah- you said at Christmas you wanted to look into adopting me,” said Rey. “I wanted to see if we had a court date yet.” She’d held onto that hope through all the dark winter months; had clung to the fact that someone wanted her, that someone might help make a place for her in the world.

 

“Oh,” said Luke, looking down at the dusty floor.

 

“I know it can take a while,” said Rey. “It can take a long long time for the papers-” She felt her hope flickering; felt her throat closing up-

 

“I didn’t file them,” said Luke. “I didn’t- I just can’t. I can’t have a girl around here, kid. Look at me. I can’t even take care of myself.”

 

 _You wouldn’t need to take care of me,_ Rey wailed in the privacy of her mind. She felt sick and dizzy, and the water she’d gulped down roiled in her stomach.

 

“Okay,” she said. “Okay. I’ll go home now.”

 

“Wait- Rey-”

 

The screen door slapped shut behind her. She didn’t need to hear his excuses. She didn’t need to be told that she didn’t belong.

 

 

##  **Late September, 2018**

 

Clouds roiled on the horizon, a purple bruise smudged across the dome of the sky. Rey’s radio crackled, the hosts warning, once again, about the hurricane was was supposed to make landfall in North Chandrila later that night.

 

Rey and Ben were sitting on the roof of his house, feet dangling, watching the storm roll by them to the south.

 

 _Hurricane Nygel is expected to make landfall as a Category 4 Hurricane sometime between two and three this morning,_ squawked the radio. _Evacuations are underway in Wilmington and the Outer Edges._

 

It changed over again, back to music, _Don’t Fear The Reaper_ playing without the bass it deserved.

 

“You sure you don’t want to come up to the house tonight?” Ben asked again, bumping Rey’s shoulder with his own. He was comfortable like this. They’d been working together for weeks, and other than cabinet doors and the final sections of plumbing hookup, his house was done.

 

“I’m sure,” said Rey. “I’m parked into the wind, and it isn’t expected to be too bad here. Besides, I’ve got ratchet straps over the frame, and _those_ are attached to four foot stakes I’ve pounded into the ground. I’ll be fine.”

 

“If you’re sure,” said Ben, turning to climb down the wrought-iron ladder she’d attached to the back of his flat-topped house.

 

“I’m sure,” said Rey. “See you in the morning.”

 

The storm didn’t go south. It hit just after three, and it was the shrieking of the wind that woke Ben up. Rain lashed against the windows, and outside something crashed. Probably just lawn furniture blown into the side of the barn, but…

 

Rey was out in this, sleeping in her little house that suddenly seemed too small to stand up to this gale while also being too tall to be safe. She was an idiot for staying in there, and he was going to be an idiot now, off to save the girl.

 

The power was out, but Luke had been prepared for that; he’d put little stumpy candles into mason jars to keep the wax from melting everywhere or starting a fire, and Ben had his tactical flashlight; the one that could shine underwater or crack a skull.

 

Ben had been a Navy Rescue Diver for years. He was used to storms and water and wind, but this was strange and different. He was soaked the minute he stepped off the porch and visibility was almost non-existent. Rain was blowing in from seemingly every direction, and without the moon or any ambient light from the house he could only see the ground in front of him in the beam of his flashlight.

 

 _This is stupid, Solo,_ Ben thought to himself. _Absolutely fucking stupid._ It was dumb, but it was for Rey, and that was enough.

 

When he made it to the feeder road he walked with one hand on the fence, knowing that it followed the driveway straight back to Rey’s place. As he got  closer, with stinging rain blowing into his eyes and pinging off his skin, he saw Rey’s little house glowing light a lighthouse, golden windows beaming like Christmas.

 

He was up the stairs in two long strides and pushing through the unlocked door into the bright, warm dryness of Rey’s house.

 

She was curled up on her sofa, BB’s head in her lap and a book in her hands. A mug steamed on the table beside her, and she was blinking at him in surprise. This vision of cozy domesticity was so the opposite of what Ben had expected (wreckage, a flipped house, limbs at odd angles) that it made him even more furious.

 

“How the fuck do you have electricity?” he asked, bending down to unlace his boots, fighting with the cotton strings that had swollen with water.

 

“Why are _you_ here?” asked Rey. “It’s three in the morning.”

 

“I was worried about you, which I guess makes me a fucking idiot,” said Ben, finally kicking off his boots. He caught Rey’s eyes going wide as he peeled out of his rain jacket and sodden t-shirt all in one move.

 

“What are you doing?” she asked, going wide-eyed.

 

“The fuck does it look like I’m doing?” Ben asked. “I’m going to dry off.”

 

“No,” said Rey, pushing away the blanket all in a rush and hurrying to his boots, which she pressed against his chest. “No, no. You’ve checked on me, everything is fine, the generator is working, and you can go back now.”

 

She wasn’t wearing pants. Those long, golden legs that Ben had spent all summer ogling were naked, framed by simple black undies that peeked from the hem of her

t-shirt. She wasn’t wearing a bra, either, and he was dripping onto the cotton and oh _god oh god._

 

Her hands were splayed against his chest, trying to nudge him towards the door, and he did _not_ want to go.

 

“You have a clothes dryer,” he said, dropping the boots. “You pitched it to me, using space for a washer/dryer combo deal, right? Efficient.”

 

They smashed onto her bare toes, and Rey yelped. “Hey! And so does Luke, you stupid man, use his when you get back.”

 

“Don’t you call me stupid,” said Ben. “You’re the one who was too stubborn to come up and stay in the real house; I was trying to be _nice!”_

 

“I didn’t ask you to be nice,” said Rey, picking up his boots, walking to her door, and throwing them out. She had to push hard against the wind to get the door to close again, but she made it, the latch clicking shut.

 

Ben was damp, chilly, half-dressed, and half-hard.

 

“Why can’t you ever let anyone _help_ you?” he asked. “It doesn’t mean it’s pity, trust me, _I fucking know.”_

 

Rey glared back, her chest (in that thin, dampening t-shirt oh _god)_ only inches from his. “You’ve been pitied for something that _happened to you,”_ she hissed. “Not _what you are.”_

 

“And what do you think you are, Rey, hmm?” Ben stepped forward, crowding her now, looming like she’d accused him of doing before. “Are you going to tell me that you’re garbage? Because you and I both know that’s bullshit.”

 

“I was a fucking _grifter,_ ” said Rey. She hadn’t moved, but her chin had jutted up, proud and angry. “I started out as trash, sure- dropped off at a firehouse like a puppy, or a broken television. From there I went into the system, and when they move you all your stuff goes into big black trash bags. That wasn’t the issue- the issue was that by the time I was in kindergarten, I knew that getting things depended on me being cute, or clever, or somehow getting into the good graces of people richer, older, and more powerful than me.

 

“I learned to manipulate people, Ben. You told them to fuck off; I learned to suck up. But it wasn’t _me_ they liked, it wasn’t _me_ that they decided to buy a winter coat that fit or to donate money to the school so I could go on the field trip, too. It was an idea of me, the version of me that I presented. So yeah- you can keep your “accept help,” speeches. It’s different than me cutting up your steak for you.”

 

“So that’s why you don’t want me here?” Ben asked, ignoring the way his gut twisted for little Rey, for the girl who had realized that she had to earn everything, including love. “Because I don’t know the ‘real you’? The fuck does that mean?”

 

“No,” said Rey, stepping back, leaving Ben surprisingly disappointed. “No. That isn’t it.”

 

“Then what?” he said, standing there in his skintight, cold, soaking wet pants in Rey’s tiny but cozy home. “What is it?”

 

_Tell me I’m a dick, right to my face. Send me back._

 

Rey turned and _looked_ at him. She didn’t move towards him, her feet didn’t shift at all, but for a minute it felt like that last second in an elevator, like all of a sudden gravity had increased. She wavered towards him, those hazel eyes wide, sad, conflicted-

 

-and then she lunged forward, saying, _this is why_ and then her hands were cradling his face and tugging him down to her and they were kissing, her mouth soft and warm on his.

 

This was a kiss nearly a decade in the making, a kiss that spoke of _history_ and whispered _future_ and was filled the warm, honey-toned _present._

 

She tasted like chocolate and marshmallow, and if Ben had had two brain cells left to use he would have realized that she’d been reading and drinking hot cocoa in her underpants on a night too windy and electric to sleep.

 

Now- now it seemed they were making their own electricity.

 

She _hmmed_ a little in the back of her throat, and Ben felt her nails scratch lightly across his scalp, her fingers tugging his wet hair. It had grown out since he’d left the Marines- not enough to cover his stupid ears, but enough for her to play with.

 

“Rey-” he breathed. “I-”

 

 _What?_ What did he say now?

 

“It’s okay,” she said, stepping back enough to look him in the eye. “It’s okay, Ben.” And then she was kissing him again, and her fingers were tugging at his sodden pants, and his hand was finding her hip and his right arm was wrapping around her waist and that still felt the same as it always had, but better: but Rey.

 

When she pulled away again he groaned, kept his hand on her, trying to keep her close, wanting her skin, her warmth, her life.

 

“Stop!” she laughed, jumping back. “I just want to get this off.” She grabbed them hem of her shirt and tugged it off over her head, leaving her only in little black bikini briefs. She was golden tanned all over, with freckles that licked over her cheeks and shoulders and collarbones. She was perfect, and there, and Ben had to bend down to take one of her nipples into his mouth, worrying it with his lips, his tongue, his teeth.

 

“C’mon,” she said when he moved to kiss a trail up to the shadow of her jaw. “Bed.”

 

She went up the ladder first, giving Ben a chance to ogle her cotton-clad ass, but also time to actually think about what he was doing: he was getting ready to have sex with Rey in the middle of a hurricane. He was getting ready to have sex with the person who qualified as his oldest friend. She was also the person who made him feel like he _could_ make something of himself. After all: she had.  

 

Rey peeked down at him from the loft space and then disappeared. Ben pulled himself up (the ladder was so short, and he was so motivated that having one hand wasn’t really a problem) and there was Rey, totally naked, sitting comfortably on her bed.

 

All the little questions that had been nagging at Ben faded away. “You’re sure?” Ben asked, crawling between Rey’s legs; wedging himself between her knees.

 

“Very,” she said, pressing a chaste kiss to his lips.

 

Ben kissed her back and then hunkered down, taking one tawny nipple between his lips, sliding one hand up her leg to her cunt. It was soft, and she was damp (and getting wetter), and he may be doing this with the wrong hand, and he may be clumsy, but she was beginning to pant beneath him, and the fingers that were tugging at his hair weren’t doing it out of pity.

 

He kissed his way down her belly, temporarily detoured to map a little cluster of beauty marks over the curve of one hip bone, and continued on.

 

“You don’t have to,” said Rey, breathless. Ben looked up the length of her, and from the apex of her thighs he could see the geography of her, the valley of her hips and the plains of her stomach and on the horizon the sunshine beam that was her grin.

 

“I know I don’t have to,” said Ben, and _god_ his mouth was dry, needing a taste of her. “But I’m dying to.”

 

He parted her with his thumbs and studied her in the half-light coming up from her reading nook downstairs. She was perfect here, too, and smelled good enough to eat.

 

He started carefully, delicately, adding a mental map of _Rey_ to all the others he carried in his head: this was the spot that make her shiver, that was the way to make her moan, and _here_ was the spot that had her yanking on his hair and rocking into his face.

 

She came with a moan and tasted of the ocean, and for a moment Ben was whole again. He wiped his face on the edge of the bedspread an slid up over her, grinning at her lazy eyes and flushed skin.

 

“You good?” he asked, kissing her, running his tongue over the seam of her mouth and wishing he’d been able to taste her moans, too.

 

“Oh yes you are,” said Rey, rolling er head back on the pillow.

 

“Not what I asked,” said Ben, running the tip of his nose over her jaw. “But thank you.”

 

Rey’s skin was golden against Ben’s own, and he watched in fascination as her fingers skimmed down his belly to grip his cock. He was braced over her on his elbows, and when her fingers wrapped around him he shuddered, hips twitching.

 

“Mmm,” Rey purred, smirking up at him. “Your turn, I think.”

 

“Both of us,” said Ben.

 

Rey’s hands gripped his shoulders and her knees clamped around his hips and she twisted, and Ben felt himself being rolled but let it happen, watching as her hair swirled and eyes glinted and skin glowed as she settled above him, her hips bracketing his own, alpha and omega.

 

“You’re so beautiful,” Ben heard himself murmuring to her, watching as the pink flush crept across the thin skin of her collarbone.

 

“Not bad yourself, Solo,” said Rey, running a hand over his shoulder and down his chest to his belly.

 

Ben didn’t want to think about himself. He didn’t want to think of the muscle definition he’d lost from his illness and moping and depression. He was getting some back- he’d been running in the mornings before meeting Rey, and lifting all her supplies (even one-handed) was sending him to bed at night pleasantly sore.

 

“Thanks,” he told her, reaching for one of her nipples and rolling it between his thumb and forefinger.

 

“Fine,” said Rey, and he grinned when she shuddered. “But I’m going to keep telling you that you’re hot. Might as well try to drown out the voices in here.”

 

She bent over him and kissed his forehead, a gently press of lips to skin, and Ben was trying to figure out why that quick, almost platonic kiss had him reeling while Rey rolled away, dug in a little basket, and came back with a shiny foil packet that Ben would always be able to recognize.

 

“Condom,” said Rey, opening the wrapper and efficiently rolling it down Ben’s length.

 

“Fuck,” Ben grunted when her fingers squeezed around the base of his cock.

 

“I plan to,” said Rey, and then she was rising over him and sliding home, heat and wet and pressure _oh god,_ and Ben’s hand found her hip and his - _arm,_ there was no space here to call it a stump- wrapped around Rey’s waist and tugged her closer and this was the same, it was the same it had been since the garden of Eden; this was two bodies and two souls and a rhythm that was older than time could measure. He watched his cock dipping in and out of Rey’s cunt, gleaming with her wetness. He smelled storm and sex, and overhead rain pattered on the roof, a desperate tattoo. It was timeless and it was _new,_ it was a girl who’d known him forever, a girl who could create something from nothing. A girl who could maybe- if he helped- make something from the wreckage that was him.

 

She came first, with the pads of his middle and index finger rubbing circles over her clit. When she fell forward onto his chest, pussy clenching and breath gasping, he worked up into her, savoring the warmth and the weight of her draped over him, and was only seconds before the familiar ache gathered in his balls and then he was coming so hard it was very nearly painful.

 

Rey got her breath back first. “Wow,” she said, wiggling off his softening cock and rolling to the side.

 

Ben tugged her against him and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Wow yourself,” he said.

 

~~~

 

Her workshop was gone. It looked like the Avengers had fought some kind of horrible war overnight: trees were laying flattened over the field, and the huge old oak that had shaded her workshop had been ripped out of the ground, plunging through the roof of the of structure. The doors had been ripped off, and all of the glass was broken. ‘

 

She couldn’t tell yet if Ben’s house was salvageable. The tree branches were obscuring her view.

 

He was standing next to her, his arm around her shoulders, and she shook him off, started to walk, to soothe herself: _I have insurance. The barn can be repaired, the lost materials can be replaced. I’ve built myself up with less._

 

It wasn’t fair. Every time she started to make something, to _hope_ for something, it was taken from her again. She blinked hard and looked up at the sun, still watery in the pale lavender sky. She could do this. She’d done it before. _One more time,_ she told herself. _And this time you have a home._

 

BB galloped to Rey, a massive branch between her teeth. _Look mom!_ She seemed to stay. _Toys from the sky!_

 

Rey sat down hard, not caring the grass was wet, and BB abandoned her toy and climbed into Rey’s lap, convinced she was the same gangly, too-thin one-year-old that Rey had brought home.

 

“You okay?” asked Ben.

 

 _No._ “Sure,” said Rey, clinging to Busy Body’s silky fur.

 

“I’ll be back, okay?”

 

She felt him press a kiss to the top of her head and then he was jogging away, weaving past tree limbs and chunks of Rey’s roof.

 

“Everyone leaves, BB,” Rey whispered, pressing her cheek to the top of the dog’s head. “But not me.”

 

Rey was on the phone with the insurance agency when she saw Ben’s truck- the one he’d bought to tow the tiny home he no longer would have- slowly rolling down the dirt road towards town.

 

“Miss?” asked the agent on the end of the line. “Miss, are you still there?”

 

“Yes,” asked Rey. She’d known he was leaving at the end of September. Probably he was going a few days early since he needed to figure out somewhere to stay before the job started. He was just being practical.  “I’m still here.”

 

~~~

 

Luke came to see her just as Rey was debating wriggling into the workshop to see what had happened. If the tree hadn’t fallen any further into the barn, probably it wouldn’t just from her wiggling around between the branches… right?

 

“Don’t even think about it,” Luke called.

 

“I need to assess the damage to Ben’s house for the insurance people,” said Rey. “They want pictures.”

 

“Yeah, and there’s also an option where they send a professional out to check for themselves,” said Ben. “Take that one.”

 

“That one’s slower.”

 

“Not everything is about speed,” said Luke, surveying the damage with her.

 

“How’s your house? And the barn?” Rey asked. She asked it dully, rotely, the way you answer _How are you?_ with _Fine._

 

“Alright,” said Luke. “Lost some porch furniture I didn’t put away, but everything is fine.”

 

_It wasn’t fair._

 

“Where’d Ben go?” asked Rey, bending to finally indulge BB in a game of Stick. She tossed the branch, and BB tore away after it. If she was playing with the dog, she wouldn’t have to look at Luke.

 

“Niima City,” he said. “And probably on to the Capitol, after that.”

 

Rey nodded slowly, and inside her stomach burned. She’d been… well, sad, and confused, and sorry for herself for decades. The fault had obviously been with her; nobody wanted her.

 

 _No. The fault was with_ them.

 

“Why didn’t you adopt me?” Rey asked, turning and looking Luke right in his pale blue eyes, like denim that had been washed nearly white, all the life bleached right out of it; a soul gone threadbare.

 

“I- ah-”

 

“Don’t lie to me.” Rey was mad now, mad in a way that she hadn’t been since high school; since she was sent out into the world without a home or health insurance or any way to get a job. The government had raised her on the barest minimum she needed to survive, and then that had been taken away too.

 

“I-”

Rey glared at him. She didn’t care that he was a veteran of the Endorian War, that he’d come home a different, failed person. She wanted to know how he’d told a little girl that he’d adopt her, and then had taken it all back without explanation.

 

“You told me you couldn’t have a little girl around, that you couldn’t _take care of me,”_ Rey snarled. “Nobody has taken care of me since I learned to operate a can opener. You just needed to give me a _place._ ”

 

“I was a drunk,” said Luke. “And you knew that. Everyone knew it, okay? I filed the paperwork, Rey. I turned it in. And they rejected me, saying that they needed proof of suitability. And I… I wasn’t ready to change.

 

“You made me grow up. They thought _Ulysses Plutt_ was a better caretaker for you than I was, Rey, and the shame of that…

 

“I fucked up. It’s my fault, it was always me. I was too ashamed to look you in the face and tell you that I’d failed you, too.”

 

Rey’s stomach was twisting and it felt like she couldn’t get enough air. “You- you applied? You wanted me?”

 

Luke tugged her to him and Rey realized she was only slightly shorter than he was. Somewhere along the way, Luke had gotten old.

 

“I always wanted you,” said Luke. “You’ve always been a member of this family.” His voice was thick, and Rey was glad she couldn’t see his face. If he cried she wouldn’t be able to blink back her own tears any longer.

 

“Hell,” Luke said gruffly. “I think if Leia had to pick, she’d take you over me.”

 

“No!” said Rey, pulling back. “No, she’s your twin-”

 

“Han didn’t speak to me for almost a year after I told him,” said Luke, and now it was his turn to avoid looking at Rey. “I told him what happened, and what I said, and he didn’t speak to me until the next Christmas when Leia ‘accidentally’ locked me in the tack room with him.”

 

_Oh- oh Han._

 

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” said Luke, taking Rey’s hand and giving it a gentle squeeze. “It’s the rest of us. None of us are good enough for you, kid. You succeeded, all by yourself. You never needed us.”

 

“No,” Rey whispered. The last of the storm was gone now, and in the trees birds began to sing. “But I wanted you all. I wanted to belong.”

 

“I think you shame us,” said Luke quietly. “You had nothing, and look how far you’ve come. We had _everything:_ the Skywalker name, inheritances… we had everything, and somehow all of us shattered, one way or another.”

 

“You’re living, Luke,” said Rey, at a loss for this. This was _hard,_ it was hard to hear him confess this; it was hard to deflate her anger with truth. “And you’re doing good work.”

 

Luke smiled a little, and they listened to the light breeze rustling leaves.

 

“Ben left,” said Rey. It was stupid- a stupid thing to say; Luke already knew. And _she’d_ known, she’d known from the very beginning that he was leaving. Everyone left.

 

~~~

 

The smell of his mother’s perfume lingered as Ben climbed up into his truck. Everything he owned fit into his truck. Everything- for the last decade he’d lived in military bachelor lodgings and wore the same uniforms day in and day out. He had one civilian suit, a couple pairs of jeans, and only one small box’s worth of mementos.

 

He had next to nothing, and he was free.

 

“I’m not taking the job, mom,” he’d told Leia, shoving things willy-nilly into a bag. “I can’t go back to security, to ...dissecting systems and taking them apart. I want to make things.”

 

She’d been in her pantsuit and pearls, but her feet had been shoved into the sherpa-lined slippers that she always wore at home. Ben knew she had a pair hidden in her office as well, bottom right hand drawer of her desk. Leia Organa-Solo would never, _ever_ be caught with her hair down, but she might deign to be seen with her feet up.

 

“What will you build?” she asked. She wasn’t fazed by this, his mom. She sounded, well- gleeful.

 

“Houses,” sad Ben. “Little places where people can be home.” Rey wouldn’t have to watch other families drive away in their little homes alone anymore. He’d watch with her, and kiss her in the barn while it rained and- and he’d do it all, if she’d have him.

 

“Does Rey know about this?” asked Leia, following Ben down the arching stairs. “Or are you going to announce that you’re her employee?”

 

“She’ll see,” said Ben, pushing the door open with the toe of his boot. “I’ll just show up until she agrees to pay me.”

 

“What about Luke?” Leia yelled, leaning out of her town house’s front door.

 

Ben waved and drove away. Even one handed, even while moping about his ‘lost’ future, Ben had learned to make something, and to be content. It had quickly become less about his house and more about being there with Rey, and having coffee with Luke, and both of them sitting there on the porch watching the sun sink down behind the barn knowing that the other had been to war and came back a little bit broken.

 

Dr. Yodah had told Ben not to pin his hopes on Rey; it wasn’t her job to fix him. That was true: even if she never hired him, even if he got a job working for someone in Jakku County and Rey only ever let him help wrestle cabinets into her builds, it would be worth it. The biggest surprise was that he’d found peace on the stupid family farm.

 

~~~

 

Ben’s truck was back. It was twilight, all rose-gold peace after the fury of the storm, and the evening light glinted off the mud-spattered black paint. Rey was sitting on the bottom step of her front door, and as the truck stopped she stood and dusted off her jeans. She’d seen Ben just that morning, but it felt like she’d aged two years. Luke had wanted her. Han and Leia had wanted her in the family. She’d had a place here all along. She twisted a piece of grass between her fingers, thinking about that: about belonging, about home, about the future.

 

“Hey,” she called as Ben stepped down, all lanky and angular and handsome.

 

“Hey yourself,” he said.

 

“What’s with all the stuff?” Rey asked, gesturing at the boxes in the back of Ben’s truck.

 

“Everything,” said Ben. “I turned down the job. I’m not going back to the capitol in October. I’m staying out here.”

 

For the second time that day, Rey felt her her assumptions blow away, peeled back from the truth. “You’re staying?”

 

“Yes,” said Ben, stuffing his hand in his pockets. _He’s nervous,_ realized Rey. That’s when her nerves, her self-doubt,  her incredulity slipped away. _Everyone leaves, but some come back. And the only reason he’d have to be nervous was if staying_ meant _something._

 

“What will you do?” she asked, her lips quirking up at the corners. “Someone mentioned to me once that nobody will hire a one-handed man.”

 

“Whoever said that was an idiot. There’s this woman-owned building company I know about,” said Ben, looking up at her through his eyelashes. It was ridiculous, he was so much _taller_ than she was: it shouldn’t work. But it did.

 

“I figured she might need some help,” said Ben.

 

_Everyone left. But sometimes… sometimes they came back._

 

“Well, I wouldn’t be able to pay you unless we got a build contract,” said Rey. “And you’ll only be getting about ...oh, twenty five percent of the profit,” she added, wishing her voice didn’t sound so thin.

 

“Done,” said Ben, taking a step forward. “What else?”

 

“You’ll have to take a course- construction safety and all,” said Rey. Ben took another step closer, and Rey knew how Red Riding Hood felt.

 

“Fine,” said Ben. “Probably they have it at the community college.”

 

“They do,” said Rey.

 

“And my stuff?” asked Ben, gesturing over his shoulder at the truck. “What about that?”

 

“Luke’s,” said Rey, jerking her chin up. What, did he think he was just going to move in with her after one night?

 

Ben raised one dark, devastating eyebrow. “Well- probably you could keep a toothbrush here,” said Rey. He’d taken another few steps, she was nearly nose-to-clavicle with him now. She had to crane back to look at him, but she wasn’t going to back down. Not from this, not from anything. “Maybe some sweatpants or something too. But that’s _it.”_

 

“Done,” said Ben again, tugging her flush against him. Now his lips were only inches from her own, his dark and crinkled at the corners, creased in a grin. “I’ve got a lead. There’s a rumor going around the capitol that a certain female Representative is planning on running in the next election cycle. She’ll need somewhere to stay on the road, and a custom build house with room for a couple aides… she’s in the market.”

 

“No way,” said Rey, fisting her fingers in the cotton of Ben’s dark shirt.

 

“Do I get a tip commission?” Ben asked.

 

“Shut up,” said Rey. When she kissed him he tasted like redemption and hope and wintergreen mint.

 

“Just sweats?” Ben asked when they broke apart, panting.

 

“Not tonight,” said Rey, and then they were stumbling up into the little house that had become home, yanking off clothes and kicking off boots, and thoroughly scandalizing the dog, who hid out of self-preservation.

 

As Rey lay sprawled on her mattress that night, sticky with sweat and sex, she mentally added another line on her list: recycling was something from nothing. Books and stories were something from nothing, novels pulled from the creative ether. She’d known about those, but…

 

But hope was something from nothing, too. She’d lost everything today, but gained back even more. She couldn’t touch it, and yet she could hold it close to her, bright and warm in her heart.

 

Ben shifted beside her, his bulk warm in the autumn evening, and Rey smiled into the dark. Hope was something from nothing- and so was love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Insert self-deprecating, hand-wringing comment here about how much time I didn't have*
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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